The Best Health Care Is Reserved for Congress

[gatorboy]

http://www.alternet.org/healthwellness/56439/?page=2

What is the state of healthcare in the U.S. today? Our USA spends over 50 percent more than say, Switzerland, on healthcare per capita, the next country in line. And on average, we spend 150 percent over other industrialized nations. The number of beds per capita in the U.S. is consistently in the bottom quartile on those countries.

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The OECD conclusion was not a surprise. We just do not get enough for our buck. But that is not true for everyone in the country. There is an employee/insurance deal in the U.S. that includes unlimited doctor office visits of your choosing; covers all accidents, routine exams, physical therapy, labs and X-rays; and the like; unlimited hospital visits and stays; certain chronic care and rehab; full prescription coverage; and unlimited specialty consultations. For the employee and the entire family. There are no deductibles, no co-pays, and only a $35 monthly fee taken from an annual salary of $158 thou. Thirty-five dollars!

The group awarded this insurance looks forward to a full pension and continued coverage until their deaths. Quite a few, most in fact, were millionaires before they took on their jobs that got them such a perk. Who gets this coverage? It would be nice if it were the underprivileged or the chronically ill and debilitated or our veterans.

But no. For starters, the 535 members of the U.S. Congress, and add to that the few hundred in the upper executive and judicial branches of government. They are also members of a demographic group where seven were arrested for shoplifting, nineteen for writing bad checks, and eighty-four for drunk driving. This bunch also has an overrepresentation of felony indictments, and a few ended up serving time.